REVISED multimillion pound plans for the Maltings have been unveiled with a bigger focus on reviving the city.

Since planning applications were first submitted in 2016, regenerating the city has become a priority for Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (SWLEP), reflecting on the lack of confidence and growth in the city.

Plans include relocating the library to the former British Heart Foundation shop on Fisherton Street, combined with hotel, gym and two ground-floor restaurants, and targeting the scene most impacted by the nerve agent incident, by radically changing the appearance of the area affected.

The Market Walk will be transformed into a retail arcade with a boutique hotel linking to the newly formed Cultural Quarter.

Councillor Pauline Church, the cabinet member for economic development and Salisbury recovery, is “delighted” to be involved with the redevelopment and hopes it will “attract new businesses and visitors”.

Cllr Church added: “As a prime city centre location, the Maltings redevelopment is a vital site in the regeneration and economic growth for Salisbury.”

The updated scheme features a reduction in the number of non-food retail outlets, an increase in the number of restaurants, a seven-screen cinema, gym, 93 hotel beds, a library, and additional new housing and the creation of a new cultural quarter.

The relocation of the library complex is aimed to be complete by August/ September 2020 with the re-facing of shop fronts in the Maltings, and the Market Walk development due to be completed by February 2022.

The project will cost an estimated £69.25million, which covers removal and demolition, enabling infrastructure and costs of building new sites.

Alastair Cunningham, who is the corporate director for growth, investment and place at Wiltshire, touched upon the plans for the Maltings at Salisbury’s Area Board meeting last month and how the project could deliver “added value” to the city.

He said: “We have government support for the latter stages of this. The money is all brought forward for phases one, two, three and four, which is around the whole Cultural Quarter, looking at boutiques and hotels that Salisbury desperately needs as well as really making that linkage between the market and the Maltings and the cultural quarter really quite fantastic.

“The idea of being able to walk through the centre of that arch again with a glass roof with shops and something nice above it, seeing the Playhouse with a real cultural quarter, is something quite exciting.”

Planning applications will be submitted to Wiltshire Council in December, for work to begin in May next year.